Meet Our Sponsors ~ Cerridwen’s Cauldron

Elicio Ember, the creator behind Cerridwen’s Cauldron is also the world-shaper, sim-builder and sponsor for Titan’s Hollow. Elicio’s work as a crafter of fantasy visions in the shape of sims is familiar to the Faire-visitors already from several past years and this year will continue the flow of enchantment. Read Elicio’s interview from 2012 to find out how he became involved with Second Life, Fantasy Faire and Relay For Life.

What is your favorite fantasy book/movie/rock album. Feel free to elaborate on this and explain why. That is of course the most interesting part.

Thats a difficult one: I do have many favorites: The Lord of the Rings of course, well, all Tolkein. Tolkein is of course the father of the epic fantasy, and the first to create a solid fantasy-world. The modern concept we have of elven was single handedly created by him, amongst other myriad influences of what we consider today trademarks of the Fantasy worlds. I am also a fan of Salvatore epic fantasy novels: All the Dritz Do’ Urden novels. Being a Dungeon Master during most of my teens and early twenties, I relished his rich storytelling and combat scenes.

Movies, well, Lord of the Rings, Avatar (I do not care much for the storyline, but the visuals are fantastic), and of course, as of late Game of Thrones. I am sincerely impressed overall by Game of Thrones; since Lord of the Rings I had not seen so much love and attention to detail, acting, culture solidity, music….all in all very very impressive.

Music? Well… I love Loreena Mckennitt and Dead Can Dance, and for something a little more up-beat I am a fan of Psy-Trance and Progressive Trance; DJ Tiesto, Ferry Corsten, Infected Mushroom, Shpongle, and so on.

What is your most memorable Faire experience. This is the fifth Fantasy Faire and I know all of you have been to at least one of these before, some of you have been to all five! So share some of the highlights as you remember them.

I would say so far The Infamous Captain Weasel’s callipso band. A bunch of the Faire designer’s, bloggers, organizers and friends went around the sims on all kinds of silly, clashing avs playing callipso at the different regions. It was so much fun and such a welcome break after so much hard work for setting up the faire.

Show us your RFL items for this year or at least give us some sneak peeks!

Not Yet! ;) I can tell you I plan on doing plants that will have their unique and only appearance as RFL items. Though I might make similar sets, the ones set for RFL will be unique color schemes and variations that will not appear on other sets.

If you met someone who had never been to the Fantasy Faire before, what would you say to them?

You are missing the most impressive, biggest, and by now most anticipated fantasy event of the year in the whole grid! What are you waiting! Get over there right NOW!!!

All the extra stuff no one ever thinks to ask but you are burning to share.

Hmmmmmm……. Callipso!

What inspired your sim. Give us your background story. We know you have one!

I started thinking about this one many months ago. I love vertical landscaping and thus wanted to create something that accented that for this fair. The first vision was to do something similar to the Western Air Temple on Nick’s Avatar; a stone structure hanging from a giant cliff’s overhang. But this blocked the view from the surrounding sims, I simply did not like the feel of it, so I decided to change the solid cliff to a much more fickle rock formation landscape. And then came the idea to change from structures built directly on the cliffs to have them hanging from them. Like giant, jewel like structures. The structures themselves were inspired on the Arabian stained glass lamps.

This is by far the most challenging project I have done so far for several reasons: The structures are heavy on alpha stained glass, this required me to make each panel its own, to avoid to the maximum possible the Alpha Sorting glitch (techy techy stuff). Also, the structures are part mesh, part sculpt, thus I had to make fitting parts that could not be imported together. Also, they are not side symmetrical, the structures are hexagonal radialy symmetrical. Radial symmetry does not translate that easily to an xy symmetric system, there are small errors that add up. Then you get doing unique stained vitral textures by hand creating a consistent aesthetic style and so on. You get the idea.

Thank you, Elicio, for taking the time to chat with us and to share the foundation of the vision that is Titan’s Hollow!